Santa Barbara Music Club

Formal Musings

Saturday, February 9, 2019 3:00 pm

Faulkner Gallery

40 E Anapamu St, Santa Barbara, CA, 93101

Image: Jean Françaix

On Saturday, February 9 at 3 p.m. the Santa Barbara Music Club will present another program in its popular series of concerts of beautiful Classical music. This afternoon’s program features an ensemble cast of performers: pianists Allen Bishop and Paula Hatley, bassoonists Simon Knight and Paul Mori, flutist Sherylle Englander, clarinetist Per Elmfors, oboist Adelle Rodkey, and violinist Claude-Lise Lafranque. Each performer contributes to a broad array of chamber-music pieces spanning almost two centuries. On the repertoire roster is a collection of works that play with conventions of formal organization, “formal musings:” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s (1756 – 1791) Sonata in G major, K. 379 for violin and piano; the Quatuor à vents by Jean Françaix (1912 – 1997); the Sonate, Op. 71, for bassoon and piano by Charles Koechlin (1867 – 1950); and Four Old Tunes by Gordon Jacob (1895 – 1984). This concert, co-sponsored by the Santa Barbara Public Library, will be held at its Faulkner Gallery, 40 E Anapamu St, Santa Barbara. Admission is free.

Program Details

Four Old Tunes (1975)
Gordon Jacob
(1895-1984)
  • Bobby Shafto
  • Golden Slumbers
  • Tell Mee, Daphne (after Giles Farnaby)
  • Charlie is My Darling
Quatuor à vents (1933)
Jean Françaix
(1912-1997)
  • Allegro
  • Andante
  • Allegro molto
  • Allegro vivo
Sherylle Mills Englander, flute; Adelle Rodkey, oboe
Per Elmfors, clarinet; Simon Knight, bassoon
Sonata in G major, K. 379
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(1756-1791)
  • Adagio-Allegro
  • Tema con variazioni: Andantino cantabile
Claude-Lise Lafranque, violin
Allen Bishop, piano
Sonate, Op. 71
Charles Koechlin
(1867-1950)
  • Andante moderato-Allegretto scherzando
  • Nocturne
  • Final: Allegro
Paul Mori, bassoon
Paula Hatley, piano

Notes on the Program

The earliest chamber work on today’s program is Mozart’s Sonata in G major, K. 379 for violin and piano, composed in 1781, and belongs to a group of the six so-called “Auernhammer Sonatas,” named after the dedicatee Josepha von Auernhammer (1758 – 1820). Mozart composed the G-major sonata along with two others shortly after he settled permanently in Vienna. Most historical accounts and program notes mention in brief a time Mozart composed this piece, but that is a bit of an understatement. The composer himself penned the following words about the work’s premiere: “today (for I am writing at eleven o’clock at night) we had a concert, where three of my compositions were performed-new ones . . a sonata with violin accompaniment for myself, which I composed last night between eleven and twelve (but in order to be able to finish it, I only wrote out the accompaniment and retained my own part in my head).” At the risk of perpetuating the narrative of Mozart’s ostensibly superhuman abilities, one hour is very brief! As Claude-Lise Lafranque and Allen Bishop demonstrate, the sonata reverses the established formal standard of the fast-slow-fast movements in Mozart’s day. The outer movements are both slow and in G major, but the middle movement is the fast one and in G minor. The bookend movements, depending on one’s listening experience, can serve to buttress the central movement.

Although composing at uncanny speeds and at young age have informed our inherited narrative of Mozart, he is not the only composer to have accomplished these feats. Felix Mendelssohn and Camille Saint-Saëns come to mind, yet less well-known is the neo-classical French composer Jean Françaix. He started composing at age six and began studying with Nadia Boulanger at age 10. When he reached the ripe old age of 21, Françaix wrote the explosively energetic Quatuor à vents (Quartet for winds) of 1933. The neo-classical stamp of the quartet lies in its formal structure, which uses the four-movement classical symphony structure – fast-slow-dance-fast – a collective effort to hold on to history at a time which every aspect of musical compositional tradition was held suspect. Indeed, 1933 was a time when all manner of harmonic languages were flying from the coop of tonality, but Françaix used an entirely accessible language. In fact, Sherylle Englander, Per Elmfors Adelle Rodkey, and Simon Knight reveal the quartet as more than a little tonally referential. The piece oftentimes settles on key centers, making the neo-classicism of the piece all the more traditional.

Interestingly enough, Charles Koechlin composed the Sonate, Op. 71 for piano and bassoon in 1918, fifteen years before Françaix composed his wind quartet. Yet the sonata did not premiere until 1938, five years after the Françaix quartet. Even more astounding is that Op. 71 did not appear in print until 1990! To say there was overlap between the final two pieces on this afternoon’s program – like saying Mozart composed K. 379 briefly – would be an understatement. Yet Koechlin’s placement in Western music history situates him in the generation preceding that of the neo-classical one to which Françaix belongs. Koechlin shares company with early-modernist composers who had inherited and had to deal with the problematic traditions of Romanticism with regard to form, pitch and harmonic content, and so forth. According to Koechlin’s earliest biographer Jules Guieysse, the composer reconciled his Romantic inheritance by completely revising his compositional style with Op. 71 and a number of other contemporaneous chamber works. As Paul Mori and Paula Hatley show, the sonata does not follow a standard formal structure for three-movement works, par for the stylistic revolution. Yet the character and harmony of the piece reveals strong models in Fauré and Chopin, some of the most romantic of the Romantics. So the nigh-contemporary pieces of the quartet for winds and sonata for flute and bassoon show two sides of the same inter-bellum French coin of Western classical music.
The latest piece on this afternoon’s program, performed again by the wind players of the Françaix quartet, is the charming set of Four Old Tunes, by British composer Gordon Jacobs. Arranged in 1975 for woodwind quartet, the piece comprises four British folk tunes: “Bobby Shafto,” “Golden Slumbers,” “Tell mee, Daphne (after Giles Farnaby),” and “Charlie Is My Darling.” Despite having been written within the past 50 years, one may mistake this piece with the fin-de-siècle compositions by Ralph Vaughan Williams. These pieces evoke pastoral imagery and timbres, in addition to summoning English history through folk song. While these pieces do not lend themselves to classical formal structures like the previous works on today’s program, Gordon grouped four “movements” together as a whole, which does fit well into today’s theme of “formal musings.” In addition, the work complements those of Françaix and Koechlin: on the one hand, the similar performing forces offer listeners points of comparison and contrast with the Françaix; on the other hand, Jacob’s placement in music history is not unlike that of Koechlin in that both found themselves having to reconcile inherited traditions of Western composition, which ultimately yielded pieces of great lyricism.

The Performers

Allen Bishop is a psychoanalyst, teacher, and pianist living in Montecito, California, with his wife Dena. Allen is a past president of the Santa Barbara Music Club, and is the founding Director of the Santa Barbara Beethovenfest. In addition, he served for eight years on the Board of Directors of the American Beethoven Society. While Allen has had a life-long interest in the piano and the music of Beethoven, it is only in the last 15 years that he has had the opportunity to study seriously with teachers including Zeynep Ucbasaran, Peter Yazbeck, Betty Oberacker, and Glory Fisher. He has performed frequently in the Music Club Concert Series and the Beethovenfest. As co-founder of the Montecito Chamber Players, he has performed at numerous retirement venues in and around Santa Barbara. Allen is the Dean of the Reiss-Davis Graduate Center in Los Angeles and maintains a private practice in Montecito.

Per Elmfors, clarinetist, was born in Sweden and earned his PhD in Physics from Chalmers Institute of Technology (Gothenburg, Sweden). An avid chamber musician, his emphasis has been on performing with string and woodwind ensembles. He is currently Principle Clarinet in the SBCC Symphony, and also plays in several chamber music ensembles. Dr. Elmfors moved to Santa Barbara in 2010, and is a Senior Systems Engineer at FLIR Systems.

Sherylle Mills Englander, flutist, grew up in the Los Angeles area, where she studied flute with Louise DiTullio. She holds a BM Degree from the Eastman School of Music and pursued graduate studies at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in Timothy Day’s studio. Ms. Englander is currently a member of the SBCC Concert Band and the SB Community Flute Ensemble, and performs in a variety of local concerts. Recognized by the Pacific Coast Business Times as one of 2016’s “Top 50 Women in Business,” Ms. Englander manages UCSB’s intellectual property portfolio as Director of its Office of Technology & Industry Alliances: she credits her musical background for her ability to think outside the box in the tech and research environment.

Paula Hatley, pianist, earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Music from the University of Arkansas, where she studied accompanying with William Gant. She has performed as a vocal studio accompanist, collaborating in numerous song recitals, and has been a member of several chamber ensembles. Active in the Santa Barbara musical community, she has served as accompanist for the Santa Barbara Master Chorale and Santa Barbara Children’s Chorus, and recently retired from the faculty of the Music Department at Westmont College.

Simon Knight, bassoonist, is Founder and President of Satya Analytics, a provider of innovative marketing and psychographic analytics to multiple industries and economic development organizations. Satya Analytics is gaining attention nationwide for its ability to understand the ‘why’ behind buying decisions. The Satya Foundation, an offshoot of Satya created to support organizations that cannot afford the high costs of big data, also provides analytical information and insights to local non-profits such as Women’s Economic Ventures. Simon is a graduate of the Warwick Business School, with an MBA focusing on data science. In his musical life, he studied with Kerry Camden, the bassoon professor at the Royal College of Music, and currently plays in amateur orchestras and chamber groups. He is a board member of the Santa Barbara Chamber Music Society and a co-founder of the Garage Chamber Orchestra, a group created during the pandemic to provide performance opportunities for local musicians while fundraising for non-profits.

Claude-Lise Lafranque, violinist, grew up in Bordeaux. France. She graduated from Bordeaux’s National Conservatory with a first prize in performance. She studied in Paris with Maestro Nerini and has worked with Irina Boshkova from Moscow Conservatory. She relocated to Santa Barbara after an invitation to play in the Music Academy of the West. She has been performing with the Santa Barbara Symphony for 25 years. A very active member of the Santa Barbara music community, she plays in the Santa Barbara Opera and Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra as well as many other ensembles. Claude-Lise Lafranque is a very dedicated teacher with over 25 years of experience.

Adelle Rodkey, oboist, received her BM Degree in Music Pedagogy, magna cum laude, from Wheaton Conservatory of Music (Illinois), where she studied oboe with Carl Sonik. A native of Santa Barbara, she was an oboe student of Anne Anderson and a piano student of Lana Bodnar and Marilyn Clemons. Honors accorded her have included the President’s Award from Wheaton College, as well as awards from the Music Teachers National Association and the Pillsbury Foundation. Adelle performs frequently in several orchestras and chamber music ensembles, and is Instructor of Oboe at Westmont College. As a member of the Suzuki Association of the Americas, she maintains a private studio of oboe and piano students.


This concert in the Faulkner Gallery is being presented through a partnership with the Santa Barbara Public Library.